Everyone who is comparing euro prices to America please, just stop. Gas is more or less fungible. It goes for what it is worth. The gas itself costs the same in America or Europe (transportation costs aside). The difference in prices is mostly due to taxes implemented by your governments. The federal government gets 18.4 cents per gallon of regular gas in the US (24.4 per gallon of diesel). On top of that, states add their own gas taxes. On average, state and local taxes add 30.5 cents to gasoline and 29.4 cents to diesel, for a total US average fuel tax of 48.9 cents per gallon for gas and 53.8 cents per gallon for diesel.

Make no mistake: the price of the raw gas is about the same as the U.S., but Europe taxes gasoline at a higher rate. At the moment, taxes in France make up about 70 percent of the pump price. For comparison, the U.S. federal gasoline tax of of 2005 was 18.4 cents per gallon, with each State adding between 10 and 33 cents of tax, according to Widipedia. That makes the maximum gasoline tax rate 17% in the U.S.